BW Hotelier PRASHANTH Kumar re-joins Accor as General Manager for Accor Advantage Plus, Accor India. Kumar has over 19 years’ experience in the Hospitality industry. Before joining Accor for the second time, he was in Dubai, launching the Strada for MENA brand. Kumar worked for eight years in the US after graduating from the Swiss Hotel Management School in Montreaux, Switzerland. His earlier stint with Accor, from 2007 to 2013 saw him in the role of pre-opening General Manager for Ibis Delhi Airport, General Manager Ibis Gurgaon, Resident Manager Novotel Hyderabad, and part of the pre-opening team of Novotel Auckland Airport. He also had a stint as General Manager at Courtyard by Marriott in Ahmedabad. The Accor Advantage Plus programme covers 11 countries and has 45 offices through the region, employing over 1,200 people. With 350,000 members providing over 1 million room nights to Accor hotels, we focus on innovation in the loyalty, travel and lifestyle market. India operations include Hyderabad, Mumbai, Bangalore, Gurgaon programs and the Shared Services Hub for the Asia Pacific business with a team of a 150 associates.
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BW Hotelier DIYA, the Indian restaurant at The Leela Ambience Gurgaon Hotel and Residences has got a brand new menu, thanks to new Chef-de-Cuisine Harjeet Kumar and his team. Chef Kumar, takes over from Angshuman Adhikari, who has left to work at Verandah in Copenhagen, which is co-owned by Noma co-founder Claus Meyer. Chef Kumar has earlier with the InterContinental in Seoul. He has also worked in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Delhi in a career which spans 15 years. Chef Kumar was part of the team at Diya before taking over from Chef Adhikari and did his training under prodigy of Chef Kunal Kapur. He was also part of the pre-opening team at Diya.-The menu, which has been entirely redone, launches on Monday, March 2, and is a return to classics of North Indian cuisine with a modern twist, according to Executive Chef Ramon Salto Alvarez, who spoke to BW Hotelier.
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By P R Bansal I AM a civil engineer and did not have a background in hospitality or any experience in terms of owning Hotels. I got into the hotel trade when I found a huge gap in the level of service and guest expectations in the cities I visited on work. You had either Five Star hotels or unbranded properties, there was nothing in between. I took the plunge, started with just one property and now have 24 properties across different verticals; leisure, business and pilgrimage. We might have grown well, but the challenges faced by mid-sized hotels are enormous. First and foremost, is competition from international chains. The chains initially try to capture the market and price out local competition. To face this onslaught, one needs to have strong USP and price competitiveness. Thankfully at Lords, we pride ourselves for our high numbers of repeat guests. Any group who is on weak wicket though, can be easily swept away. Branding and publicity for better recall and brand perception is also a must. Midsized hotels struggle here because of their miniscule marketing budgets. Any compromise at the marketing level can lead to the brand not getting any recognition and in the absence enough sales staff, selling room nights is an uphill task, not to mention trying to keep ARRs up. Fortunately, we are in the strong position, where our publicity budgets are worked out in advance and we are able to rationalise our marketing spending. Another important issue is the lack of matching civic infrastructure. Lot of midsized and budget hotels is situated in the 2 tier and 3 tier cities. In terms of business, these have grown tremendously, but civic infrastructure like roads, transportation, connectivity and power have not kept pace. The basic urbanisation issues have not been addressed and those using these properties are greatly inconvenienced because of this. Besides the above issues, there is a huge challenge in terms of training and retaining staff. There is huge shortage of skilled hotel staff and this is more acute in budget hotels. We have overcome this by having our own training institute, but a lot of budget hotels suffer in a big way, because of lack of trained staff. But even with these challenges and having to deal with varying taxation and government policies, there is huge opportunity and potential in this sector. India is one of the fastest growing economies with a very young working population. Either on work or leisure, they travel a lot, offering huge opportunity for those in the budget hotel segment. The present government too has placed major thrust on tourism. It is considering a tax holiday/concessions for budget hotels and this measure will go a long way in improving the business prospect for budget hotels. At Lords Hotels and Resorts, we are very upbeat and look to aggressively expand our presence with several new properties opening in Agra, Jodhpur and Bhaktapur in Nepal. We are confident of growing to 45 properties within the next couple of years. P R Bansal, Managing Director of Lords Hotels and Resorts.
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By Sourish Bhattacharyya IN THE SPATE of financial results declared by major international hotel chains last week, all of whom reported rosy growth figures lifted by America’s sterling economic performance in the last quarter, India hardly ever figured in the much-awaited conference calls of their CEOs. The only exception was IHG-InterContinental Hotel Group’s CEO, Richard Solomons, who announced that Chaobella, the Italian-Chinese restaurant that has had a good run at the Crowne Plaza Okhla will be ’developed’, possibly for a rollout across the country. Solomon pointed to the uniqueness of the Chaobella experiment. It serves the two favourite foreign cuisines of the Indian market ’ Chinese and Italian ’ at the same venue, so you can have dim sum and pizza in one outing. Interestingly, he mentioned Chaobella in the same context as Cai Feng Lou, IHG’s signature Chinese restaurant, which will see a global expansion into 50 hotels. Is Chaobella also likely to go global? Nurtured carefully by the former Crowne Plaza Rohini, Barun Jolly, Chaobella has won the hotel several awards. Jolly’s successor, Raju Shreshtha has now to take this legacy forward, especially since his global boss is so gung-ho about it. Solomons, as reported by Skift.com, made two important points relevant to hoteliers worldwide, apart from fine tooth-combing the financial results. (1) IHG, he said, had identified breakfast as one of the ’biggest opportunities to improve the guest experience.’ Keeping this market reality in mind, IHG has introduced a new food and beverage training around breakfast. (2) Social media reviews are another important tenet of the changing guest experience, but the IHG twist to the story is to get its guests post reviews on the company’s own websites. ’Social media has led to a huge number of experienced travellers posting online about their experiences in our hotels which help shape consumer sentiment and behaviour,’ Solomons said, adding that InterContinental had collected more reviews on its hotel sites in 2013 than TripAdvisor had for all of the company’s hotels. ’This highlights the greater relevance for guests and potential guests of reading reviews from experienced and brand loyal travellers,’ Solomons is quoted by Skift.com as saying. The company’s web revenue has gone up by 30 per cent and its mobile revenues by 85 per cent in the last three years, highlighting the need for and impact of the group’s digital initiatives. Sourish Bhattacharyya is Consulting Editor, BW Hotelier.
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By Shantanu Jain MARRIOTT International formally launched Courtyard by Marriott in Agra on February 19, 2015. This is the 12th Courtyard by Marriott property in India and the 28th Marriott Group hotel in the country. The hotel is also the 1000th Marriott property to be opened in the world. BW Hotelier was there at the launch and found out a little about the operational side of the hotel. Vishal Bharti, the General Manager of the Courtyard by Marriott, Agra takes over the property after spending seven and a half years with the Trident in Agra, where he served as the General Manager last. According to Bharti, the hotel has a staff strength of 200, an approximate room to staff ratio of 1:2. The hotel currenty has an occupancy rate of 40 per cent, which according to Bharti, should reach 65 per cent within 3 years. ’The opening of Courtyard by Marriott Agra marks our entry into one of the most important leisure cities in India and we are excited to offer business and leisure traveler’s the best in class customer service, where every guest experience will be curated to perfection,’ Bharti added in his exclusive chat with BW Hotelier. Others in the Bharti’s management team include Executive Chef Vivek Kalia, who has been with the Marriott Group since 2004 and was working as Executive Sous Chef at the Mariott Goa previously. Rajneesh Kumar from Courtyard Ahmedabad is the current Banqueting Manager for Courtyard by Marriott, Agra.-Kumar worked with the Taj group in Hyderabad before joining the Marriott group in 2008. He was Director Food and Beverage at the Courtyard by Marriott, Bilaspur, before this. Courtyard by Marriott, Agra started operations on January 19, this year, with a soft launch and is currently offering specially tailored room packages to attract customers. According to senior sources in the hospitality business in Agra, a lot of focus is being given to getting customers from the shoe and leather business based out of the city. Rajeev Menon, Area Vice President, South-Asia, Marriott International, who was also present at the formal launch of the hotel thought the hotel was a testimony of the group’s vision for and its standards of excellence. ’With this launch, Marriott International is now present in the Golden Triangle, with hotels in Delhi NCR, Jaipur and Agra,’ he added. Shantanu Jain is Junior Correspondent, BW Hotelier.
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By Shantanu Jain MUMBAI is to get a brand new Marriott, the second in the city come March 1. This is what Rajeev Menon, Area Vice President, South Asia at Marriott International told BW Hotelier in an exclusive interview during the launch of the Courtyard by Marriott, Agra, (see photo) the 1000 Marriott worldwide. ’On March 1, this year we open JW Marriott in Mumbai, our second in the city, with 585 rooms and soon after that we open Renaissance in Lucknow, which promises to be one of the best hotel in the city. Much like the previous years, we will be opening about 6 to 8 new hotels in India in 2015 with 49 other hotel properties are under construction,’ Menon said, The new properties are spread across India, in locations like Shillong, Kolkata, Jaisalmer and Amritsar among other cities, we found out. ’Courtyard is an extremely well-positioned, entry level five star hotel brand and leads in many markets across this country. We believe with the opening of this hotel will provide an opportunity for our customers to choose a Marriott branded hotel when they come to a city like Agra,’ Menon told us at the launch, adding that aim was to be among the top 3 hotels in Agra. ’Agra as a city, has changed completely in the last 3 years with markets for destination weddings, events and other businesses opening up and we hope that the consistency in our services across all our brands will benefit this Courtyard by Marriott in Agra’, he added. Courtyard by Marriott in Agra has 189 rooms--114 currently operational--including 18 suites. The property has three banquet facilities totalling 30,000 sq. ft. The property also features 2 restaurants--Momo caf- an all day dining restaurant and Momo 2 Go, an order to go service for takeaways. The hotel will also launch an Indian cuisine outdoor dining restaurant called Alfresco post the monsoon season this year. Shantanu Jain is Junior Correspondent, BW Hotelier.
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By Sourish Bhattacharyya WHAT IS it about India that causes shake-ups in international hotel chains? Just as we were getting excited about the Starwood global leadership’s month-long ’immersion’ in India starting from March 3, the hospitality world on the other side of the international time zone woke up to the news that the man widely regarded as the rock star of his business, Frits van Paasschen, has quit as the company’s President and CEO. The hospitality industry behemoth’s chairman, Bruce Duncan, made it abundantly clear later in a conference call with the media that resignation had been ’building over the past few months’. The board of directors was evidently unhappy with Starwood’s growth story under van Paasschen. Apparently, the company wasn’t making big-ticket acquisitions, nor was it growing as fast as its rivals in the no-frills, or what the industry like to call ’select service’, segment of its business. Another matter of concern was the rate at which hotel owners were migrating from Starwood to other brands. In 2014, Starwood added 74 hotels and 15,000 rooms, but it also lost 28 hotels and 7,000 rooms during the year. Duncan said the departure was ’all about execution’ and didn’t represent a change in corporate strategy. Starwood’s third-quarter revenue fell by 1 per cent from a year earlier, according to Bloomberg Business, compared with increases of 9.5 per cent at Marriott International and 8 per cent at Hilton Worldwide Holdings, Inc. (Check out http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-17/starwood-s-new-ceo-faced-with-expansion-to-catch-rivals for more details) The markets, significantly, greeted the announcement of van Paasschen’s resignation with a 2.7 per cent increase in the value of Starwood stock. It had, in fact, gained a mere 4.2 per cent in the 12 months through last week, trailing Marriott, which climbed 58 per cent, and Hilton, which showed a 30 per cent growth, according to Bloomberg Business. Starwood owns nine high-visibility hotel brands, including St Regis, The Luxury Collection, W, Westin, Le Meridien, Sheraton, Four Points by Sheraton, Aloft and Element by Westin. All of these brands, barring St Regis and Element by Westin, have established an expanding Indian footprint. W is making its debut in Goa in November-December 2015 and it is believed, though not officially announced, that Mumbai’s Palladium Hotel is well on its way to becoming the country’s first St Regis. Van Paaschen’s announcement reminded me of the resignation of Kempinski’s high-flying CEO Duncan O’Rourke, the industry’s boy wonder, hours before he was slated to deliver the concluding address of the Geneva-headquartered international hotel chain’s World Gourmet Summit at the Kempinski Ambience Hotel in East Delhi on October 30, 2014. A change at the top in Starwood predictably will have global ripples, for the company operates more than 1,200 hotels and resorts across the world and employs in excess of 1,80,000 people. For India, Starwood is eyeing a century ’ 100 hotels in operation or under development ’ by 2016. The global behemoth seems to be well on its way to achieving the target ’ in the last seven months, it has signed 11 new deals across India. An avid tri-athlete famous for his passion for fitness (he starts his day with a 10-mile run at 6 a.m.) and informal working style (he has an aversion to ties and prefers being addressed by his first name), van Paaschen, in his seven years as President and CEO, has aggressively pursued international expansion, which was why he initiated the practice of immersions in key markets. Starwood’s global leadership relocated first to China in 2011 and then to Dubai in 2013 to better understand these markets. The immersions, according to company insiders, have led to positive results. In China, for instance, Starwood has nearly doubled its footprint, from 74 hotels in July 2011 to 136 today. It has doubled its Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) membership base in China. And it has made significant investments in digital technology aimed at the mobile-centric Chinese market. The Chinese SPG mobile application has been downloaded more than one million times since 2011. Clearly, all this wasn’t enough to save van Paasschen’s job. Under his leadership, according to Bloomberg Business, ’Starwood’s growth slowed compared with peers such as Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., Hyatt Hotels Corp. and Marriott International Inc.’ The business news agency quoted Nikhil Bhalla, an analyst at FBR & Co. in Arlington, Virginia, as saying, ’Starwood made a bet on expanding internationally at a time when international regions aren’t doing that well. There have also been several missteps in communicating a capital-return strategy to shareholders, which left people wondering what Starwood’s story was all about.’ The Wall Street Journal aptly commented: ’Mr van Paasschen’s sudden exit shows how hotel companies have little tolerance for mixed results at a time when the industry is booming, rising group and leisure travel are lifting revenue-per-available room to new highs, and hotels are fetching record sales prices.’ (Click on to http://www.wsj.com/articles/starwood-ceo-frits-van-paasschen-resigns-1424172767 for the full story) Starwood has announced that Adam Aron, a director at the company since 2006, will act as interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent replacement for van Paasschen. ’The board believes now is the right time to take steps to accelerate Starwood’s growth, improve performance and sharpen our focus,’ Chairman Bruce Duncan said in the statement. Aron, he said, ’is very familiar with our strategy, brands and leaders around the globe.’ ’Adam has been a Starwood director for nearly a decade and has deep hospitality industry experience as former CEO of both Vail Resorts and Norwegian Cruise Line. He is very familiar with our strategy, brands and leaders around the globe, and we are confident Starwood won’t miss a beat as he steps in to lead the Company during this transitional period,’ Duncan said. Where does that leave the India immersion? Watch this space for the latest. Sourish Bhattacharyya is Consulting Editor, BW Hotelier.
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By Avijit Arya HOSPITALITY is very unique industry and hoteliers (owners, general managers and the brand or management company) are a very different species. For them, internet marketing is still firmly on the expense side of the balance sheet. My respect to them all, who make hospitality a successful industry, with minimum government support. The mindset which makes all this possible, the forecasts and the sheer hard work to deliver an un-paralleled guest experience, somehow finds a roadblock when confronted with a situation to ’invest’ into something for the very foreseeable future, such as digital marketing. One reason is because technology whether in-room technology to iPad based restaurant table booking tools is introduced to the hotel once the property is ready and all the investments have been made. The hotel is ready to start a balance sheet with a cost vs revenue column and digital experiences and their creation to enhance guest experiences and the costs involved struggle to fit into the 3 to 5 percent marketing budgets fixed at board meetings. If I had a penny for every time we have had hoteliers start to regret the fact that they were late in adopting digital, I would have been a far happier man. The industry that works the hardest and creates the best experiences for other human beings, needs to finally translate these experiences into online and digital experiences before, during and after, their guests check out. These three phases are now interlinked. A hotel might sell their rooms to wedding clients, tour operators or just corporate, but these clients will most probably check out the hotels online presence and read the different guest reviews available online before making a decision of whether to buy or not. India is a country where a good online presence translates into a lot of offline bookings. This is actually easy to measure through various tracking tools such as online vouchers or online only deals. So here is the take-away: A) Digital and technology is best implemented from the planning stages of the hotel to be readying for the tech friendly guest of today. B) -Emphasise in training your teams on digital presence and measure the ROI on every rupee. C) Finally, to adopt the best in digital technology, to be able to make your hotel visible through the best and most cost-effective distribution channels. The author is Chief Moghul @ Internet Moghuls.
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By BW Hotelier The InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) recently, has partnered with Pernod Ricard to launch its BAR150 programme across its managed InterContinental, Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn hotels and resorts throughout Asia, Middle East and Africa region. The BAR150 programme by Pernod Ricard, celebrates 150 years of mixology and aims to serve a new menu of signature cocktails in IHG hotel bars. On the occasion of the launch, Phil Broad, Vice President, Food & Beverage, Asia Middle East and Africa, IHG, said, ’Partnering with Pernod Ricard has given us the opportunity to provide our guests with exceptional cocktail options, made with renowned spirits and liqueur brands, across more than 200 bars in our hotels in the region.’ Quentin Job, Vice President, Innovation and Commercial Development, Pernod Ricard Asia added,’We also treasure the opportunity of exchanging professional cocktail mixing skills with IHG colleagues to deliver consistency across IHG hotels. There is a lot more creation and innovation to come for IHG guests and I look forward to taking this art form to the next level.’ Under the partnership, Pernord Ricard has designed a series of cocktails based on its rich brand portfolio.
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